State offers UH faculty 31% raise over 6 years

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

An unprecedented six-year salary agreement has been reached between the state and the University of Hawai'i faculty union that would give professors and instructors a 31 percent pay raise through 2009 and that would require UH to share the cost in the last three years.

UH president Evan Dobelle, with Gov. Linda Lingle and representatives of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly behind him, outlined details of a new six-year contract yesterday. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

The ratification would avert a faculty strike that could have come as early as April 5.

Because the 31 percent increase is spread over six years, the current salary of the faculty would actually increase by a little more than a third by the end of the contract.

In announcing the agreement yesterday, Gov. Linda Lingle said the contract would bring "stability to the university and certainty for professors, students, parents and the community" and provide "a strong future, not just for the university but for our state."

With the state in the midst of collective bargaining negotiations with two other public worker unions, state chief labor negotiator Ted Hong said the faculty union settlement should not affect other contract talks, noting that no other union has agreed to extend contracts beyond two years.

"The governor has told everybody from the beginning that each bargaining unit has to be looked at from their respective duties, responsibilities and contributions," Hong said.

"You can't look at two years, or even four years. You have to look at the whole contract, and that's why we negotiated the way we did in the contract. You split it up in any shorter period of time, it wouldn't have worked."

The settlement is also not expected to have an effect on the anticipated announcement Monday of a binding settlement by an independent arbitration panel on pay issues for 23,000 state and county white-collar workers in the Hawai'i Government Employees Association. The panel is only supposed to take into consideration testimony given by the two sides in January.

But news of the settlement, nonetheless, gave HGEA deputy executive director Randy Perreira ammunition to criticize what he called the Lingle administration's "hypocritical" position on the state's ability to pay raises for his members.

The agreement delighted UH students worried that a strike might affect their education.

"I feel happy I don't have to worry about that," said Jason Kama, a 24-year-old senior in sociology who graduates in May. "It's one less thing on my plate. I was thinking, if I wasn't going to graduate, then what was I going to do? Most of the students are in full support of the faculty, but it was unfortunate the semester was hanging in the balance. This is wonderful."

Yesterday, flanked by members of the negotiating teams from the state, the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly (UHPA) and the UH administration, Lingle said the agreement would cost $162.8 million over the six-year period, with UH paying for $38.9 million and the state $123.9 million. She praised the hard work of each of the three teams whom she called "partners" in the university's future.

"It shows ... the economy will continue to grow and the university will be a key part of that growth," Lingle said. "There is no better investment in town than the University of Hawai'i."

In the final three years of the proposed settlement, salaries will be paid for by the state and UH jointly, with three-quarters coming from the state and one-quarter from the university.

Lingle said she is counting on an expanding economy to provide the revenues necessary to meet these obligations. UH President Evan Dobelle said that revenues from constantly increasing grants and contracts — plus a potential increase in tuition beginning in 2006 — would cover the university's share.

"My interest was twofold — that there be a long-term contract and that students be held harmless for the next two to three years," said Dobelle, who has supported major raises for UH faculty since his arrival in July 2001.

"This resolves both of those issues. Any senior in high school will not have an increase in tuition. And any UH student who is a sophomore will graduate without any increase in tuition."

Dobelle said that beginning in September of 2006 there could be tuition increases to help pay for the salaries, but it's likely they would be only "a couple of hundred dollars" at community colleges, which have the lowest tuitions in the system, and around $700 at Manoa.

"The University of Hawai'i will still be one of the least expensive public universities in the U.S.," he said.

Lingle acknowledged that the threat of a faculty strike across the 10-campus system gave urgency to the past four days of negotiations.

"It was certainly an incentive for us and kept us both at the table," she said.

But it was clear from the beginning that nobody favored seeing picket lines emerge as they did three years ago when a 13-day strike brought wage increases of 12 percent over two years that brought faculty up to the 30th percentile, which meant that 70 percent of peer institutions of higher education in the United States pay their faculty higher salaries.

Under this proposed agreement — which must now be approved by the UHPA board and then ratified on each campus — faculty salaries on the community college campuses and at UH-Hilo and West-O'ahu, would come up to approximately the 50th percentile but fall slightly below that at UH-Manoa.

UHPA president Mary Tiles said the faculty union also recognizes the university is at a "critical point" and needs stability.

"There's a lot of change going on at the university ... and we thought if we could get the university on a track where the faculty could at least see they were making some progress in their salary component ... this would be important for the university."

UHPA supported Lingle in the past two gubernatorial elections — she lost to former Gov. Ben Cayetano in her first race — and she acknowledged yesterday her long, 20-year friendship with UHPA executive director J.N. Musto and the trust she had in him.

"UHPA fought very hard throughout these negotiations," she said, "but they were reasonable, and I appreciate that very much."

Board of Regents chairwoman Patricia Lee thanked the governor for her support of the university and said the agreement "validates the faculty."

Regents vice chairwoman Kitty Lagareta said, "We went into this with the spirit of not how little we can get away with, but in the spirit of how far we can move in paying the faculty what they deserve.

"We feel very good that we made some very good progress in that."

Staff writers Lynda Arakawa and Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report.